Imagine it’s six thirty or so and everyone is gathering around the table for dinner. The table is set. Plates are in place with silverware positioned off to the side of each one. The water glasses are already filled and contain just the right amount of ice. Someone even went through all the effort to fold the napkins! It’s dinner time…at least it seems like it. Something’s missing. There are no hot pads on the table. No smells are coming from the kitchen. All the trappings of dinner have been prepared – but no one prepared the food itself.

Dinner’s not dinner without the food and, in the same way, family worship isn’t worship without Jesus. We don’t worship in the abstract. We worship someone and that someone’s name is Jesus. It doesn’t matter if you sing together on the ride to school or read the Bible in the morning as you drink your coffee. For worship to be worship, it has to point us to Jesus. And, to help you do that, here are three questions for us to ask as we study the Bible:

1. How do we anticipate Jesus? – As we read a story, how do the characters lead us to anticipate Jesus? Maybe it’s a positive attribute that Jesus turns up to eleven. Ruth was faithful to Naomi and did everything in her power to bring about her redemption, but that’s only a sliver of how faithful Jesus is to us. But even bad examples can point us to Jesus. Jonah was a most reluctant prophet and he refused to carry God’s grace to his enemies. But Jesus is a much better Jonah. He didn’t just proclaim grace to his enemies; he died for his enemies. If we take the story we’re reading and draw the line out, how does it get us to Jesus?

2. How do we long for Jesus? – Some passages are bleak. For example, Genesis 5 is just a long list of people who died (except for Enoch). Where’s Jesus in that? Death is an evil thing. Don’t we all long for the day that death will be no more? Genesis 5 is our normal experience, but we don’t want it to be that way forever. This longing is satisfied in Jesus, who died to kill death and bring about eternal life for everyone who believes. When you witness the ugliness of sin and it sparks in you a hunger for something better, how do the promises of Jesus satisfy you?

3. How do we respond to Jesus? – Some passages contain lots and lots of instructions. 1 Peter 5:6-11 is a list of commands as the Apostle closes out his letter. But worship never starts with what you do. It starts with what Jesus has done for you. So, as you read a command, how does this command flow out of what Jesus has done? How does his death make us humble? How does his return make us watchful? Our goal in worship isn’t to train up little legalists. Our goal is to train up a generation who responds to Jesus.

You don’t have to be a Bible expert to see Jesus on every page. You just need to ask the right questions. Hopefully these three will get you started, though this list certainly isn’t exhaustive. The British preacher, Charles Spurgeon once wrote, “All roads lead to London and all verses in the Bible lead to the cross.” May our worship follow every road in Scripture and never stop until we get to Jesus!